August 3, 2009

The key point that he leaves unsaid is that you can afford a huge Hispanic population a lot more easily in a conservative state than in a liberal one. But, can you stay a conservative state once you have a huge number of Hispanic voters?

You can become conservative from a Hispanic point of view - promote Mexican nationalism, Catholic social values, turn a blind eye to rape and sexual assault, discriminate against homosexuals, etc. Ironically it won't really be a world American liberals are going to like living in very much. And the same will happen with the Islamic takeover in Europe. In 100 years both the US and Europe will be far more "conservative" than they are today - more religious, less equality, far less tolerant of diversity and alternative life styles. But the dominant traditions won't be white European ones.

I saw Ross Douthat on Charlie Rose last week. One point of interest is that he said Republicans need to get between 35 and 40% of Hispanic votes and Bush did get that, part of Bush's success was due to the housing bubble.

I think he needs to read your analysis more closely. Isn't yours concerned with land use (and Hispanics)? He seems to willfully ignore the many reasons that California is in the state it's in (i.e. Prop 13, 2/3 majority for a budget, etc.)

So how come you're in California, anyway? Why don't you live in Texas?

Also, NYT has a new article about education and Bloomberg. Perhaps you can comment. Maybe this can be a Gates-free week.

Calling Mexicans-especially the Mexicans who illegally immigrate here-"Hispanics" is perpetuating the problem. "Hispanic" means "of, or pertaining to, Spain". I've been to Spain and never once saw anyone that resembles most Mexican illegals.

Call them Mexicans, mestizos, or whatever. But not "Hispanic".

"Latino" is troublesome too, inasmuch there is no evidence that Caesar was an Aztec.

I saw Ross Douthat on Charlie Rose last week. One point of interest is that he said Republicans need to get between 35 and 40% of Hispanic votes

Of course the only reason why Republicans need to get between 35 and 40% of Hispanic votes is because Bush added about five million illegals and several millions legals to the Hispanic population in the US.

At some point you'd think that even Republicans would realize the flaw in this math.

Outlaw -- The problem with the State of California is not Prop 13 or a two-thirds majority for a budget and raising taxes.

It's spending too much on people: mostly welfare, crap political patronage, and growing the size of the state employee payroll, and not enough on THINGS.

Things such as roads, bridges, tunnels, water treatment facilities, electrical grids, telecom grids, universities, and so on add to a state's productivity. Growing a monstrous and pork-ified political patronage budget with massive welfare outlays (California spends a lot on education, almost none of it reaches the average student in the classroom -- nearly all of it is political patronage pork) REDUCE productivity.

California is a high cost, low productivity state coasting on the revenues of a relatively thin band of Dot-com, real-estate, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley billionaires during boom times, and crashing down (like every other state in the Union) when times are bad.

Every other state has this structural problem, because the incentives to build a patronage network are nearly irresistible. However, California is the worst off because it's amplitude of boom-bust is magnified by the humungous amounts of wealth generated in boom times by just a few, and destroyed during busts.

California is a high cost, low productivity state coasting on the revenues of a relatively thin band of Dot-com, real-estate, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley billionaires during boom times"

California "low productivity?" Practically all the produce and domestic wines grown in this country and shipped to other states appear to be grown in California. They grow almost all the commercial almonds and atichokes, just to name items offhand. I'm always hearing of crops whose prime producer, indeed only producer sometimes, is California.

Cant -- Agriculture is being driven from California over ... yep SWPL Water politics. Mainly the Delta Smelt, which has put much of the San Joaquin Valley into what amounts to desertification. Including wine (there goes the surplus production that created Charles Shaw aka "Two Buck Chuck" for Trader Joes) and raisins and almonds and a lot of other crops.

This is because the politics are that SWPL coastal yuppies don't like Agriculture and want it gone. For the "good of the environment." There is almost no manufacturing left in LA County now, and hardly any in SoCal. What amounted to business in the Inland Empire was mostly, warehouses.

Manufacturing runs afoul of the Air Quality Board, office buildings in LA are capped at power usage and efficiency, there are myriad niggling details to which make up California along with New York and New Jersey as one of the worst places to do business. Which leads to a lot of under-the-table Craigslist personal services (no accident it was created here) and big-capital firms like Hollywood and Silicon Valley (which does design and prototyping only -- manufacturing is done in China). ------------FWIW, McCain said he will vote no on Sotomayor. He must be scared -- his phone must off the hook and with constituents mad as hell and he's looking for the exits.

The wife and I spent this last weekend at the "garment district" in downtown LA. It looked very much to me like the side street bazaars of Tijuana Mexico.

Since when does importing poverty make a nation rich?

A few years ago, Bear Stearns did a study that claimed that up to 30% of all workers in LA county were being paid with cash, under the table. I'll bet most of them are also getting WIC, food stamps, section 8, Medi-Cal, and all the other welfare freebies, since, supposedly they show no income.

"Practically all the produce and domestic wines grown in this country and shipped to other states appear to be grown in California. They grow almost all the commercial almonds and atichokes, just to name items offhand. I'm always hearing of crops whose prime producer, indeed only producer sometimes, is California."

Almonds and Artichokes -- the staple diet of all Americans! Are you trying to give California a down-home Midwestern patina? This is why California needs to be broken into two or three states in order to be rational -- the artichoke 'industry' is not supplying welfare for greater Los Angeles.

Sockstand - I doubt that is the point, but, like Portuguese and Latin I have to thanks your words. I even remember to see a American movie about the Discoverie (of America)where the Spaniards have already Indian blood...And the disease is spreading; few time ago I saw a newspaper reporting street fights(in Madrid) between Spaniards and Latins... If South-americans are Latins, why Blacks are not Anglo-Saxons? And since I born in Africa, I also can state that they are what we call Mulatos, not Blacks(Negros).Greetings!

He seems to willfully ignore the many reasons that California is in the state it's in (i.e. Prop 13, 2/3 majority for a budget, etc.)"

Prop 13!? Why not blame the repeal of the stamp-tax? California's problems are not due to it's citizens being taxed too little. Prop 13 indeed!

"So how come you're in California, anyway? Why don't you live in Texas?"

I've tried to explain this to southerners (for example) numerous times to no avail. The weather is nice. Not just nice.....perfect.

People in the southeast will spend nearly every waking minute of the day between May and September cursing the infernal heat and stickiness, and then from November to February cursing the damp bone-penetrating chill, and yet still not understand why someone might want to live somewhere where you could get by with just a windbreaker and no A/C.

California can get away with nazi behavior because everyone with money or the hope of ever having it wants to live in it. The ecumene of the state is a strip from San Diego to Sacramento and 30-40 miles inland, that's a small strip. The weather is great, and despite the tax and enviro crap and high real estate there are jobs-skilled people can always find work, unlike the Midwest or Deep South where the lack of high specialization, aerospace, Hollywood, etc means it's min wage for non-professionals. Beleive me, there's more juice to be squeezed yet. Look at New Jersey...

New Jersey is the most densely populated state in America. Why do so many people want to live there, with its high taxes and regulations? Because of the weather (humid summers, freezing winters, with two or three pleasant months a year)?

The law of unintended consequences, utterly unpredictable, yet completely dependable, is what will save California.

We live in one of the few Mediterranean climate zones of the world. Every other Med locality has sky high real-estate values and is essentially too pricey for the poor to live in. Southern California is a holdout to the model because of different vectors that have acted on population growth: massive utility projects meant cheap water and electricity, the displacement of wealthy conservative WASPs who built the those projects with wealthy liberal Jews who put a halt to further investments, the ground zero cultural upheaval of the sixties (and all its spin-offs), proximity to Mexico and absolutely filthy air for decades that drove as many people away from the region as did the collapse of aerospace.

The air is now cleaner, the border with Mexico--hardening, the water and power more expensive, the mid-range jobs fewer, the welfare state is collapsing and the land values here are, even with the meltdown, still very high compared to the rest of the country. And we keep legislatively sequestering scarce private land for state parks and other statist purposes, while refusing to build new power and water facilities for the growing cities.

Progressives predict with a twisted grim satisfaction that Los Angeles will turn into Rio. Ghettos of high rises, slums and right next door, the walled in rich. Perhaps. But the land in our thin coastal strip is too valuable to accede to such low returns.

I think climate gravity will do a population reshuffle, forcing NAMs into the desert and beyond, perhaps into Bush's Texas, that is if we don't explode in an orgy of multicultural violence first.

I won't consider homosexuality as a dominant tradition of the Europeans. It's more like it was forced upon us. Liberals don't consider the endgame; if they would they would stop denigrating conservatism and Christianity. For them it's just about trashing conservatives and traditionalists. It's like a lot of the liberals in South Africa who were screaming for and agitating for black rule, only to get onto the next planes out to Australia, Canada, Britain and the US once Mandela took over. Some of those stories are just hilarious in their hypocrisy.

"New Jersey is the most densely populated state in America. Why do so many people want to live there, with its high taxes and regulations? Because of the weather (humid summers, freezing winters, with two or three pleasant months a year)?"

Some people like having four seasons. They can enjoy NJ's beaches in the summer, it's parks in the spring and fall, and ride a sled down a hill in the winter. Plus, NJ has some of the best schools in the country, great restaurants of every conceivable type, proximity to New York City, and high-paying jobs available in the pharmaceutical industry, finance, technology, etc.

It depends what you mean by "conservative." The fiscal matters are taking care of themselves, as the revenue collapse is bringing massive budget cuts. Latinos and blacks oppose same-sex "marriage" (an absurdity) more than Anglos. Leftist Cardinal Roger "Pervert Coddler" Mahony's replacement could be a tough Latino who challenges the pro-abort views of Latino legislators.

The next gov likely will be Jerry Brown redux. He's a screwball, Democratic machine politician who's unpredictable, and now in his 70s, with his head in the '70s.

California is less and less Republican. But it might develop liberal and conservative wings of the Demo party, like the Old South before the 1970s.

Almonds and Artichokes -- the staple diet of all Americans! Are you trying to give California a down-home Midwestern patina? "

oforcryingoutloud. They were just two examples. There are quite a few other fruits, nuts (not the human kind), legumes, various food oil crops, grains, wines, etc. And almonds are extremely important and will become more so as the alternative health movement accelerates--almonds in various forms play a big part. There are many crops--fruits, vegetables, grains, even oils, that come from California. You don't know this?

Currently in Texas, a state senator is promoting a mandate to cap state taxes, expenditures at the rate of population growth plus inflation. The overall point is to freeze the size of gov't. This is a reaction to the expanding % of GDP of the national gov't and the failure of states like California and New York.

As for Hispanics in Texas, many really are Spanish and have been here over a hundred years, some for over two hundred years. They are significantly different from new immigrants who come from the lowest echelon of society. The bottom in the US is still higher than the bottom in Mexico and Latin America. Texas aims to be as stingy as the fed gov't will allow with its welfare and medicaid. This de facto makes people work or leave.

Noteworthy is how Hispanics in Texas perform better on standardized tests than they do in other states.

Also, gangsta's prefer other states because Texas executes more people than any other state, and its prisons have some of the highest homicide rates as well as high attempted homicide rates. As one warden once put it to a reporter, "Hey, not everyone is a professional killer." Basically lamenting that so many prisoner on prisoner homicide attempts were unsuccessful, without actually coming out and saying so.

California "low productivity?" Practically all the produce and domestic wines grown in this country and shipped to other states appear to be grown in California. They grow almost all the commercial almonds and atichokes, just to name items offhand. I'm always hearing of crops whose prime producer, indeed only producer sometimes, is California.

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You got that right.

Unfortunately the fed gov't is turning the water off on farmers there. As if the state isn't crippled enough with insane regulation.

As for Hispanics in Texas, many really are Spanish and have been here over a hundred years, some for over two hundred years. They are significantly different from new immigrants who come from the lowest echelon of society.

In the 2000 Census, 40% of the Hispanics in California called themselves "white" (4.35 mln out of 10.97 mln). The same figure for Texas was 58% (3.87 mln out of 6.67 mln). Many Texas "Hispanics" undoubtedly speak in a Texas drawl, wear cowboy boots, hate Obama and love guns, and just incidentally happen to have a Spanish surname.

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